Sometimes We Are Alone

A sacred invitation

I live in a town where it seems there are very few people like me. There are very few African American clinical psychologists in private practice here and even fewer that were raised by a white mother in a white community. I am a Black single mother, in a town without a single mother’s meet-up group. I am a Black woman whose sexuality is more like a rainbow than a straight line, in a town without a single gay bar. I am a woman that experiences friendship only with those who talk deeply and openly about all things that dwell in the shadow, and I am living in a culture that preferences discretion.

Sometimes we are alone, and alone is its own kind of sacred invitation. How do we accept it?

First, we must work with the judge.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.” -Rumi

Humans do not like to be alone. It frightens us and so we judge; we judge ourselves and we judge others, as if our judgments could create the experience of life we want. If we are alone, the judge insists that something is wrong—I am wrong, you are wrong. So human. The judge is inherently human. It is a powerful egoic protector. And though the judge does not help us feel Love, she does take us to an important door; the judge helps us discover the parts of ourselves that have been shunned, rejected, cast out by our experience of conditioning. The judge helps us find what needs the embrace of unconditional Love.

And this takes us to the second step of accepting the sacred invitation of alone; we must notice that which embraces the all parts of ourselves, even the judge; we must discover the unconditioned.

Meditative practice is the process of resting into and embodying a Presence far beyond I, far beyond any egoic expression. Resting into this Presence I feel unconditional Love or what Loch Kelly calls Awake Awareness. In my experience, Love allows all without exception. She receives the human I am, as I am, not as I should be. Resting into this Love, alone is not a horrible experience of separation. That is the experience of residing in the judge.

Connected to Love, resting into Presence, we are a wisdom that is vast; we notice and follow the internal guide; we feel the trees and the ground, the stars and the sky. We experience ourselves a beautiful thread in the intricate fabric of life.

Sometimes we will be alone, but as we learn to rest into the experience of Presence, we notice that we are not separate.

Let’s practice.

SO grateful to be waking up alone, together.

Nicole

Image includes a card from, Black Experiences, Cards for Parts Work. Illustrations by Kenjji Jumanne-Marshall. Permission to post granted by publisher.